Cybersecurity:

Cybersecurity

In today’s world technology is everything, we use it every day to do tasks for work. The problem with being so reliant on our technology is that we make it so easy for people to gain access to our personal information. Major companies like Facebook, Google, and Marriott were cyber attacked. We used the internet and our personal devices to store information like our bank accounts, insurance, social security, and other highly personal information. The reason we see so many breaches is tools used to commit cybercrimes are getting smarter as time goes on.

In 2018, there were 12,449 confirmed data breaches which is a massive 424% increase from 2017. Identity records are some of the easiest ones to compromise where 47% of the records have been exposed publicly. Recently in a study done by the Bleeping Computer that most cybercriminals have switched their focus from large corporations to smaller businesses simply because they are less protected and easier to access.  They discovered that this switch in focus greatly contributed to the 4-time increase in data breaches in 2018. The United States leads the way in the number of identity records being exposed and take up 32% of the identity breaches around the world. Underground activity also had a huge jump in underground activity by 71% with 14.9 billion identity records stolen and were circulated even though not all of the records were authentic. All statistics for this paragraph along with multiple charts to display the information were found on the Bleeping Computer blog site. 

Facebook in October of last year was slammed with the company’s largest breach in history. The attack affected 50 million users of the social media platform. This allowed hackers to go in and gain access to all user information. Facebook apparently took advantage of the feature “View As” which allowed users to see what their profile page would look like to other users. Hackers also stole the digital keys so it would keep you logged in to Facebook and make access to your personal information easier. Facebook then said they fixed the susceptibility to cyberattacks like these by resetting the digital keys on 50 million of the affected accounts. They also for extra precautions reset 40 million other accounts that used the View as feature I stated earlier. I found all my information on this breach and useful steps on how to prevent attacks like these on your Facebook account on the Federal Trade Commission’s website in the consumer information section.  

Like I stated earlier we rely on technology for almost everything to store data at doctors offices, government information, etc. Recently there was a ransomware attack on Jackson county which forced all officials to revert to the paper age. Switching all actions to paper drastically slowed down government productivity. Officials finally relented and paid $400,000 for the attackers to give them the file decryption key. This attack took a tool on all departments in the county but communications were still fully functional as citizens could still dial 911. Luckily medical services in the county took the smallest blow of the departments due to them being on a third-party provider. Now although this attack was rather drastic the county honestly has no one to blame but themselves. Since the county did not have a backup system in place they had to choose between paying off the attackers or taking a major hit keeping them offline for long periods of time. Attacks like these are being investigated by the FBI and will most likely lead back to a group located in Eastern Europe. However, malware like Ryuk that was used in this attack is usually borrowed from other pieces of ransomware like Hermes which was created by the well-known hacker group Lazarus based in North Korea. Groups like these are responsible for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in just as little as four months. Cases like these usually happen when hackers use the method of phishing which Google defines as “the fraudulent practice of sending emails pretending to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card information.” All this information and more on hacker groups like these can be found on the Bleeping Computer website. 

Artificial Intelligence plays a huge role in our daily technology storage and use now how do we know what to trust? OpenAI an artificial intelligence group announced they built an artificial intelligence content creation engine but wouldn’t release they full model to developers. Why didn’t they release the full model? One word phishing which hackers send emails to users by sending them links to click on like ‘win a free new iPhone’ which downloads malware to your personal device to gain access to your personal information. In a study done by Confense Incorporated they discovered that 91% of cyberattacks in 2016 were done through phishing. With a new personalized content creation engine like this it could make the method of phishing easier as a powerful new creation engine like this could make phishing emails more personalized even mimicking a person’s certain writing style. The struggle with artificial intelligence is how do we know if advancements in the technology will help cybercriminals more or help people to stop attacks on a major scale. However, so far there haven’t been any cases documented of an attack that was caused primarily by artificial intelligence. A new verson of a malware named Rakhni Trjoan was smart enough to adjust its malware to change to fit the system it infected. With this new malware cryptocurrency wallets installed were infected and wiped out. Jacob Serpa a product marketing agent manager at Bitglass Incorporated recently stated “This is just one small example of where the future of threats can lead.” This information and more on artificial intelligence being used in malware can be found at Silicon Angles website. 

After reading how unsafe our personal information is and how easy it is for hackers to access things like or passwords and bank account information really makes me think twice before clicking anything on the web. I think more people in the world should educate themselves on malware and how hackers reach you personal information. Maybe if more people were aware the attacks would decrease throughout the next few years. Although, with cybercrime tools getting stronger each year protecting your information could become more difficult.